The invention is related to the field of data storage systems, and in particular to data storage systems employing internal file systems and files for representing host storage objects.
Data storage systems that provide secondary storage of data for host computers may employ internal file systems and files to represent host storage objects such as logical units (LUNs), logical or virtual volumes, host file systems, etc. In such arrangements data may be written in streams of contiguous or address-sequential data blocks. For efficiency, storage space for such data may be allocated in units spanning multiple contiguous blocks, reducing the overhead and delays of the more typical block-by-block allocation used for data written in a more random manner.